Getting started with decentralized identity
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Getting started with decentralized identity
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Re: Getting started with decentralized identity
#2The digital identity infrastructure space is already crowded, with players like Apple, Google and Microsoft working with governments and institutions, because they own the devices we use, and the entire point is that people will be able to use their phones to identify themselves everywhere. Apple ID is already like 90% there, despite having to trust Apple with your personal data, which nobody has a problem with. The Web3 approach of having to trust nobody is not really practical to begin with. Blockchains are slow and expensive. Worst yet it's still up to you to verify the client and whether it's connected to the authoritative version of the blockchain, since blockchains can be replaced by a fork. At that point you might as well trust Apple.
Re: Getting started with decentralized identity
#3The digital identity infrastructure space is already crowded, with players like Apple, Google and Microsoft working with governments and institutions, because they own the devices we use, and the entire point is that people will be able to use their phones to identify themselves everywhere. Apple ID is already like 90% there, despite having to trust Apple with your personal data, which nobody has a problem with. The…
Definitely possible that Apple will win the identity wars. That said, I don't agree with the characterization of web3/web5 as "having to trust nobody". If anything, all the efforts around identity are meant to allow for bringing IRL notions of trust onto the internet. In other words, the whole pseudonymity thing is not a result of using blockchain, but just the fact that nobody's bothered to add identity verification to a lot of stuff happening in web3. That's changing though.
Re: Getting started with decentralized identity
#4The digital identity infrastructure space is already crowded, with players like Apple, Google and Microsoft working with governments and institutions, because they own the devices we use, and the entire point is that people will be able to use their phones to identify themselves everywhere. Apple ID is already like 90% there, despite having to trust Apple with your personal data, which nobody has a problem with. The…
Definitely possible that Apple will win the identity wars. That said, I don't agree with the characterization of web3/web5 as "having to trust nobody". If anything, all the efforts around identity are meant to allow for bringing IRL notions of trust onto the internet. In other words, the whole pseudonymity thing is not a result of using blockchain, but just the fact that nobody's bothered to add identity verification…
Sheesh, "web5"? I guess we blew right past web4.
Normally i try to avoid low quality complaint comments like the one i am making, but blockchain naming is frustrating.
Re: Getting started with decentralized identity
#5Earlier quoted context omitted.
Definitely possible that Apple will win the identity wars. That said, I don't agree with the characterization of web3/web5 as "having to trust nobody". If anything, all the efforts around identity are meant to allow for bringing IRL notions of trust onto the internet. In other words, the whole pseudonymity thing is not a result of using blockchain, but just the fact that nobody's bothered to add identity verification…
Sheesh, "web5"? I guess we blew right past web4. Normally i try to avoid low quality complaint comments like the one i am making, but blockchain naming is frustrating.
It's a little bit tongue and cheek. (Read the post.)
Re: Getting started with decentralized identity
#6The digital identity infrastructure space is already crowded, with players like Apple, Google and Microsoft working with governments and institutions, because they own the devices we use, and the entire point is that people will be able to use their phones to identify themselves everywhere. Apple ID is already like 90% there, despite having to trust Apple with your personal data, which nobody has a problem with. The…
> The Web3 approach of having to trust nobody is not really practical to begin with. Blockchains are slow and expensive.
I generally agree, for almost all uses blockchains are pretty bad.
But it has, so far, been an eventually consistent global write-only data store where reads have 100% uptime. I don't want a service layer on blockchain, don't want to be using the blockchain to transact, but if there's some small modicum of write-once globally-read-many datum (such as oh say, a cryptographic token I can use to sign things to prove my identity) where blockchain actually seems like a good match. The slow and expensive isn't a problem, if all I'm doing is proving an identity I made a long time ago.
I'm not super worried about people verifying me using a bad blockchain. These systems should be self-verifying & diverging for too long should trip systems.
Re: Getting started with decentralized identity
#7As I said 48 days ago when this last came up on YC, the classic "Why your idea for stopping spam sucks" list applies.[1] Go re-read that and you'll see the same identity problems and proposed solutions.
If people can create and abandon identities cheaply. they will use those identities for annoyance or fraud. Hence spam, robocalls, etc. This is also why the "federated" social networks are not too useful.
On the other hand, publicly visible identities that are very strongly tied to a person or physical place lead to strong tracking and the abuses associated with that.
So, explain how "Web5" avoids those problems.
Re: Getting started with decentralized identity
#8I like the idea that at least in web5, the term "wallet" might actually make sense, because the credentials or whatever actually "live" on your own device/node.
Web3 should really use "signet" rather than "wallet." Web3 is all about signing, attestation, and authentication through digital signatures. That's what signets are for, not wallets.
Coinkite recently switched to the term "signing device," but 1) that's lame, and 2) "signet" already exists and means the same thing.
At least with web5, the wallet analogy works.
Re: Getting started with decentralized identity
#9As I said 48 days ago when this last came up on YC, the classic "Why your idea for stopping spam sucks" list applies.[1] Go re-read that and you'll see the same identity problems and proposed solutions. If people can create and abandon identities cheaply. they will use those identities for annoyance or fraud. Hence spam, robocalls, etc. This is also why the "federated" social networks are not too useful. On the other…
Would having all data produced by a DID being verifiable mean that I could stop any nugget of information coming out of that producer from reaching me just by a simple computation?
Re: Getting started with decentralized identity
#10Two weeks ago I was part of a small group that met at IPFS Thing in Iceland. One very promising specification missing from this article is UCAN (from Fission) which provides a set of custom claims that can be added to a JWT to allow delegation of privileges in a decentralized environment. Definitely worth a look!